COLLECTION by Puro Laevuo
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contents introduction
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what’s CIP?
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thoughts of the week
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market ready
10-15
pastiche 1560
16-21
kickstarter
22-27
what’s studio impression?
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publishing unbound & studio identity
30-35
anthology
36-41
summer show gatalogue
42-45
workshops
46-51
exhibitions, talks, visits & the blog
52-57
what’s CCS?
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alternative souvenir of london
60-65
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introduction I am a 24-year old BA Graphic Design student at The Sir John Cass School of Art at London Metropolitan University. I am a second year student, however, I only joined the graphic design course this year, as I transferred from the theatre department of London Met after my first year. This has been a busy year with lots to learn, to do and to catch up, and I have really enjoyed the projects that we have worked on and the classes we have had. I am so, so happy about my decision to move to this course instead and I can’t wait to see what more is to come in the next and final year of my graphic design studies! This book is a project made for the Creative Industry Practice class. It takes you thought the past year by showcasing class projects that we have done in all the different modules this year. Each one of them has required months of research, experimentation, and production. The process has been complemented with regular workshops, talks and visits that you’ll also find out more about later on. All pictures in this book have been photographed by me. The only exeptions are pictures on pages 7, 8, and 32 which are from the internet. I hope you find this book and its content interesting and enjoyable! I sure enjoyed making it!
Puro Laevuo 04. 05. 17
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what's CIP? Throughout the year, we have studied interesting examples of designers or companies from the design industry to stimulate creative and critical thinking. These examples went by the name “Thought of the Week” in the second half of the year when each week we were given an example of a distinctive design practice to think about. The objective was to learn something from the industry professionals that we could use to enhance our own projects with, or at least to be aware of all the options that there are to use in your design process. Creative Industry Practice (or CIP as we call it) is a module which focuses on gaining experience and understanding of professional ways of working in the design industry. The projects are designed to reflect real-world situations that we can face after university in the working life. Through working on the projects, we learn about working in groups and sharing responsibilities, as well as, working on our own. The core skills used and developed in CIP consist of project management, communication and presentation skills, critical thinking and evaluation, and setting goals and targets individually or within a group.
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We also had many interesting guest speakers coming to talk to us about their field. These included Nik Hill, Fig Taylor, and Alyson Hurst from G.F. Smith. The talks and workshops on bookbinding, design softwares, photography and videomaking all fed into the CIP projects during the process. The 4 projects we had in CIP this year divide into 2 individual projects and 2 group projects: • •
Market Ready (group) Kickstarter (group)
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Pastiche 1560 (individual) Collection book (individual)
thoughts of the week
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massimo vignelli
To start thinking about typography we had to watch a very short video clip about Massimo Vignelli, an Italian designer. In the video he talkes about typography and white space. Even though the video was only 23 seconds long, it was very interesting to watch. Vignelli’s idea that “it is the space betwee the blacks that really makes typography” was really intriguing. He says that we think that typography is
”In a sense it is like music. It is not the notes, it is the space we put between the notes that makes the music.” -Massimo Vignelli Image from www.in-source.org
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black but it really is white. “A good typoghrapher always has sensitivity about the distance between the letters.” I really liked this thought of the week. I think it was my favorite of them all. The video was full of great quotes and descriptive metaphors that really made me think and analyse type. A lot of good knowledge in a short clip!
unit editions Image from formfiftyfive.com Adrian Shaughnessy (left) and Tony Brook (right).
The theme of self-publishing was introduced to us in the form of a video about an independent publishing company called Unit Editions. On the video, two of the founding members Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy, talk about Unit Editions, what made them turn to self-publishing and what it means to them. Tony and Adrian make some really good and interesting points through out the video. I found it interesteng when they talked about the reasons behind starting Unit Editions. Tony liked the idea of being in control of what you do and being in control of your own destiny. The process of imagining what they want their own company to be like and “inventing yourself” was something he thought was great about starting Unit Editions. I think I would be amazing to do what they have done! That way you could work on exactly the kinds of projects you want and do what you find interesting.
They also talked about the role that publishing plays in the age of internet. Someone had asked them why they want to start a publishing company when everything (magazines, books, news..) can be read online. Their response was similar to what we have discussed in Studio Impression. When you have a physical book in your hand, the engagement with it is deeper. Also, the the physical book is valuable as an object too, not only because of the information it holds. That is an important prinsiple that I have
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also tried to follow wihile designing this Collection book. I have tried to make the design so nice that it would be more desirable to see the projects that I have worked on in tthis physical book rather than just reading about them on my blog. Another interesting point in the video was what Adrian said about the value of design skills in the modern world. The skills that designers have are needed everywhere andcan be applied to so many things. And what’s important to keep in mind, there aren’t enough jobs for all designers and new graduates every year. So, some of us will have to use their skills for something else. One option can be self-publishing.
g.f smith To realize the importance of paper choices, Alyson Hurst from G.F Smith, a British paper company, came to talk to us about paper. She talked about the different qualities that different papers have and how they can be used to enhance the message of a book.
really shiny because of the glossy coating. The black & white picture however has been printed onto an uncoated paper and it looks softer, less detailed, and instead of shine it has a matte surface.
There are more paper options than you would probably even think! Just choosing the right white paper makes a huge difference. Some whites are warm, some yellowy, some more blueish, some have more texture than others, some are coated and some uncoated.
Different papers also feel different, which is important to consider as well. You want the reader to get the right impression when they pick up the book We got to see examples of papers that feel like leather, rubber, cotton wool, or plastic. Those were quite impressive! You wouldn’t even believe that they were actually paper.
She also pointed out formats that are really good if you want to use different paper stock in one publication. For example loose sheets in a box, simply folded booklets or magazines, or even just folded sheets bound with a hairband. I really liked the idea of using different stocks. The examples we saw looked so much more interesting than if they had been made with only one kind of paper.
The difference between printing on uncoated or coated paper became clearer to me durning the talk. On uncoated paper the picture won’t be as sharp and bright as on coated papers. See the picture below as an example of this. The color picture has been printed on a coated paper. You can see every single hair on her head and even the texture of her skin. Also the image is
Alyson also showed us papers that have had a pattern/texture embossed onto them. She said in their factory they can do that onto the whole big sheet of paper and it costs next to nothing. Still the effect you can get by using a paper like that is immediately noticeable and can be an easy way to make a publication or product look more special.
According to Alyson, G. F Smith want to inspire people to use different papers. And I definitely was inspired! I started thinking about paper in a completely diferent way. Before I have only thought about the color and thickness of my paper choises, but now I know that there are so much more to it. In the furute, I want to take advantage of the endless possibilities of paper!
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market ready
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Market Ready was a group project where we needed to create a collective brand, design products, develop a promotional plan and propose a market stall display. All groups pitched their proposal to the Student Enterprise team at Accelerator. The best proposal was chosen to go to sell their products at London Met’s Christmas Market in December. The pitch had to include a group manifesto, group logo, a header for a social media page, a stall design, competitor research and target group, your USP and costing.
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My group created a brand called Gum Up which would sell Christmas cards and stickers. Each group member designed at least one card and two stickers. The common thing in all the designs was the color scheme that we decided to only consist of pastel pink, mint green, black and white. We didn’t want to use the clichÊ green and red Christmas colors. We researched production and packaging costs online and found cheap materials on Amazon and printing possibilities at Hato Press. I went to Spitalfields market to do competitor and market research about prices and products.
development
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my cards and stickers
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group brand proposal
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pastiche 1560
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Pastiche – “an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.” -Wikipedia
In the Pastiche project, we had to make a 15-60 seconds long video inspired by someone of major personal creative importance or influence. The subject could be anybody from the arts or design industry. We had to research their work and analyse why they do it the way they do. In the video, we needed to adapt the subjects style and create a narrative that says something about their style, career, etc. The video outcome could be anything (abstract, literal, illustrative, graphic…) as long as it was relevant to the subject. The video also needed to include 3 things: image, sound, and type. The final video should then be created using a video editing software like Adobe Premiere and uploaded to Vimeo and Instagram.
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I had two options for my project. The first one that I came up with was an Australian artist called Anthony Lister. He makes abstract, colourful, street art style paintings which is a style I really like. My second idea was Handmade Font, an Estonian design company focusing on type. Their typefaces are playful and fun and they are created from all kinds of material from food ingredients to sticks, socks and even ice. In the end, I decided to go with Handmade Font because I like typography and I was really inspired by their work. I really had fun with this project. I bought many different ingredients from a shop: cookies, spaghetti, green beans, mince beef, candy, cucumber… I experimented with them and tried what kind of type I could create from them. I took pictures and film and tried to make video and stop motion experiments. Eventually I made my final video as a stop motion with Skittles on a white back drop.
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development
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outcome
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kickstarter
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The aim of the Kickstarter project was to create a project plan and a crowdfunding campaign on an online platform called Kickstarter, as the name of the project suggests. This project was done in the same groups as the Market Ready project. Each team was to create a Kickstarter in preview mode, but as if it was a real live campaign. The campaign and project plan was then pitched to the Student Enterprise team at Accelerator. The presentation had to include the group’s Kickstarted page consisting of visuals of product and processes, details of rewards, product descriptions, project goals, and a 2-3 min promotional video. The presentation also had to include the cost of materials, pricing of products, and production and promotional plans.
it was when we worked on this new project. Instead we came up with a new brand which would sell matching products for dogs and their owners. For the dog, we’d offer a collar which would have a matching design with the t-shirts, tote bags and bracelets that we would make for the humans. We also updated the brand name from Gum Up to Gum Pup.
For the Kickstarter campaign, we could have used the Gum Up brand and the products that we developed for Market Ready but my group’s project back then was Christmas related so it wasn’t relevant to the spring season which
One day we met up in a park to have a photoshoot Hannah’s dogs and the product prototypes that we had created. It was a fun session and the pictures looked good on our Kickstarter page.
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We researched comparable products online to do competitor research on the prices and products already on the market. We actually found another Kickstarter page that was selling matching products, but they were for cats and their owners. We also found cheap materials online, like fabric, t-shirts and tote-bags, that we could use to make our products easily.
development
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outcomes
Logo design by Ee Zin Teh Pocket and collar design by Cameron Little.
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what’s studio impression? Studio Impression is a year-long studio focusing on publishing and design practice. We explore both print and digital formats through workshops, research, projects, visits and talks from industry professionals. In our studio projects we aim to combine traditional and digital methods – screenprinting, letterpress, paper folding and binding with web, social media and digital software. Individually and in groups we generate content, use different formats in an innovative way, try different ways of working and create creative solutions. Throughout the year, we have had many useful workshops where we gain skills in screenprinting, letterpress, magazine and book design, visual identities, print and production, InDesign, Risograph, typography, and publication flat plan. The
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workshops have been accompanied by interesting visits and talks, including Hato Press, G.F. Smith, MagCulture, Calverts Press, and Fedrigoni UK Ltd. The skills learned contribute towards, and have worked as an inspiration for, the versatile publishing projects: •
Publishing Unbound – poster zine project & visual identity proposal
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Anthology – group book design project & individual visual response to a text
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Summer Show Catalogue group design project to generate an exhibition guide
publishing unbound
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The objective of this project was to research London based innovation and interesting companies in the current field of publishing and respond to it in the form of a folded poster-zine. The zine consists of an article and a typographic poster inspired by the chosen publishing company. The final outcome was printed as an edition of 25 copies and using only one colour. In the end, each student’s poster-zine became a part of a collection of zines which presents a slice of London’s publishing industry from our perspectives. Each student also devised their own unique binding method for the collective publication.
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While working on the publication we were encouraged to think about the relationship between text and image and how to use them to translate ideas into a well-designed outcome, and to engage with the process of making a publication. Alongside this, each student was also asked to design and propose a visual identity for the Studio Impression. The aim was to develop an understanding of a brand personality and the design principles of a visual identity. The everyone had to design a logo with a strapline and present them in socail media or book mock-ups. The proposal also needed to include a typeface suggestion.
the interview Design For Today is a small publisher based in London who specialize in limited edition books. Their fascinating style caught my eye and I managed to get the opportunity to sit down with the founder of the company Joe Pearson to hear from him what Design For Today is all about!
All the artists that I’ve got in my books draw first, and once they’ve drawn it then they may scan it and put it on the computer to do the colour separations. But they are all hand-drawn. None of the artists use computers to design their work. So I think that’s one aspect, the printing technology whereby it’s printed using spot lithography as suppose digital lithography, so you get the kind of depth of colour and vibrancy of colour that can only be achieved in spot lithography. I deliberately choose young artists. I’m trying to give them their first break. I’ve wanted to choose artists who are 2 or 3 years out of college. Some of them have done their first books for me, but since then have now been picked up by major publishers doing some amazing work.
Design For Today also reissues “forgotten classics”. Have those been designed in the same style as the new limited edition items you publish? How do you choose what classics to reissue?
How was the company first born and how did you come up with the concept for limited edition books and prints? When I switched careers to move into publishing, I was really trying to publish the books that I’ve been collecting for 30 years. Particularly books using lithography and the Russian and the French children’s books of the 30s, 40s and 50s. I’ve been collecting those for so long and I always wanted to try to do something similar to those. That’s what gave me the idea. I really thought that it was appalling that the English, British print industry was collapsing and the publishers were printing in China chasing the cheapest printing they could possibly get. They are getting their printing cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, and they are more and more disposable, which I thought was sad. So I was trying to publish books that I thought would be collectable and printed properly using English printers, and also using the kind of the graphic style and graphic techniques that I have collected, but in a different context. As a company, what do you think makes you unique and separates you from others in the industry?
And also it’s nostalgic too. But it’s not the kind of cuteness, it’s a kind of ironic quality that you know it is inspired by the Mid-century. The artists I’ve tried to commission have taken the colour palettes and design style and put it into modern context.
Your publications are inspired by Mid-century design – what is it about that era that captures people’s imagination today? I think the quality of training at art colleges in the 1930s and 1940s had a huge emphasis on drawing. Technically, those artists of the 1930s and 40s are really really good at drawing. That quality shows through. Also the colour palette that Mid-century designers and illustrators use is different from the palette today because today through synthetic inks we get a whole range of fluorescent colours that weren’t available. So if you look at books from the 1940s, you can almost spot them and tell the era just by the palette of colours they use.
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I’m actually just about to re-publish two books from the 1940s by an illustrator called Hillary Stevin. These books have not been printed for years and years but they are really superbly lithographed. They were printed in small edition in the 1940s, but forgotten now. It’s the same style: lithographed, same colour, same way. I’m just printing them again using the same technology as they were originally printed with. The forgotten classics are mainly things I’ve got in my collections. Some publishers are reprinting classics now, Tate Publishing and V&A Publishing for example, but they only republish things that they think they’ll make money out of. But I can do things that are interesting and maybe have an audience of 500,000 or 600,000. If it’s a really good quality book but may not be cute enough or commercial enough for mainstream publishers to take on, I’m filling that gap really.
Images from designfortoday.co.uk
outcomes
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studio identity
I painted names of the companies everyone had interviewed for their projects on the back side of my binding method. This brought the whole collection of posterzines together. The posterzines are in pockets on the other side.
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studio identity proposal
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anthology
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In the Anthology project, we worked with the English Literature and Creative Writing Department to redesign their bi-annual anthology of student writing. The Anthology is a selection of the best work by English Literature and Creative Writing students and this year it contained 19 pieces of writing. Each of was assigned one text from the collection to work on individually. The objective was to analyse and respond to the text visually. The visual response needed to make use of digital design technology like InDesign, W or film, and printing methods like screenprinting, letterpress or collage. The method was up to us to choose.
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The other part of the project was a group task. In groups of four or five students, we had to come up with our own design proposal for the Anthology book. The proposal had to include ideas for design and layout, materials, production and printing method, and costing within the given budget. All groups pitched their proposal in front of our own teacher and a teacher from the writing department. The two best proposals were chosen to be developed and combined into one design with help from the whole class. The final book would then be printed in a quantity of 300 copies. After the book is printed and published, we will organize a launch event and exhibition that will showcase the individual responses to texts and the Anthology book. The event will happen some time in June. We would like there to be live readings from the book at the launch event so I have contacted the Theatre department about the possibility to have a few theatre students to come and do readings during the event.
group re-design proposal
The idea behind our cover concept was that all the authors of the stories would write their own name in their own handwriting for the cover. This would show that the book is a collection of texts from many different authors. We also wanted the cover to stick to our color scheme: white, black and green. (Cover design by Cameron Little, see image on the right.) We separated each piece of writing with a green page with a short summary of the text. We leveled titles and the beginning of a text on the same level on a spread, and we used drop caps in the beginning of each story to draw more attention to where the text begins. We also thought about how poems would be laid out on a page. We thought that it is important to have only one poem per page to allow it the attention it deserves before moving on to the next poem. We wanted to give all pages quite a lot of white space around the text. That makes it nicer and more inviting to read. It also looks much better thought through. The book size is a bit bigger than A5, it is 220 x 155 mm.
For the typeface, we chose Garamond Pro. It is clear and easy to read and it looks professional. We thought that it suits well for literature. For the body copy, we used point size 9. Paper would be uncoated, offwhite, paper. For the pages we chose Accent smooth 120gsm and for the cover Munken Design 300gsm, both from G.F Smith. We chose perfect bound for the main Anthology book. It looks professional and well produced. The appendix that contains the authors’ commentary and bibliographies would be stapled. The appendix would be a bit smaller that the book itself and it would be printed onto thinner paper so that it can be placed between the book. We also wanted to make matching bookmarks for the Anthology book. Having a bookmark would make it easier to find the right place, e.g. at public readings. The bookmarks would be screen printed at uni and they would match the proposal’s color scheme.
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individual visual response
The text that was assigned to me was called “Walkies� and it was written by a student called Jack Houston. The text was about his walk with his dog along the River Lea in East London. The story describes all the people he meets, events that he gets involved, and things he sees around him, like nature, buildings, and animals, during the walk. The story is very detailed and full of material. To me the main theme in the text however was the
River Lea and its surroundings. Jack Houston also quotes other texts written about the area in his text. I chose to create my visual response by using a map of the river as my starting point and combine it with typography. I experimented with letterpress type but designed the final piece in Photoshop and printed it using screenprinting.
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summer show catalogue
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In this project, we worked as a group with the whole class. The task was to design and print a catalogue for the Visual Communication 2016/2017 summer show which would be printed in an edition of 200 copies. The summer show will showcase the projects and outcomes that all the four studios (Impression, Dialogue, Author & Reporter, and Inventivity) have worked on throughout the year. The catalogue’s job is to offer information to visitors about the studios and their projects. The publication is designed as an unbound booklet consisting of A3 sheets which are folded into A4. On one side of the A3 sheets there is text while the other side of them creates a sign for each studio then the sheets of the booklets are taken apart. We were not allowed to use readymade fonts in in the signs. Instead we had to either create new letterforms by ourselves or use a readymade font as a starting point and visually edit it for the sign. I was given the Inventivity sign to design
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for which I used Bauhaus 96 typeface as my starting point and created an edited “shadow” for it. The whole booklet was printed with the riso printer and each studio was given their unique ink color. For Inventivity it was yellow. We also worked on the layouts of the text pages together. My job was to lay out the project summary pages for the Studio Inventivity. During the process, we learned about risograph printing, editorial and printing flatplans which all were new things to me. We also developed our skills in page layout, typography, InDesign, and Photoshop.
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workshops
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We had many workshops in Studio Impression that supported the projects we were working on at the time. Some of my favourite workshops were the screenprinting workshop we did during the Anthology project, the studio placard/poster design workshop which we did for the Christmas exhibition, and the riso printing workshop that we did in the beginning of the Summer Show Catalogue project. Screenprinting:
Studio Placards:
In the screenprinting workshop the idea was to learn the process and how to use all the equipment correctly. I had never before done screenprinting so it was really useful to me. I also enjoyed it a lot! We all had been told to come up with an A3 size design to practice with. I made mine in Adobe Illustrator because I needed to practise using that too. The design was a simple geometric design consisting of shapes, lines and dots. I was excited to see how it would transfer onto paper by screenprinting it. I made many different color experiments and I was really happy with the outcomes.
The objective of the workshop was to design posters/placards using sentences from our studio manifesto. Each student got one sentence to design a typographic poster around using maximum 3 colors. The final designs were then sent off to Newspaper Club to print them as a newspaper. If you take the sheets apart, you reveal all the posters and can hang them on the wall. For the Christmas exhibition, we constructed placards and glued the posters onto them.
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Riso printing: For the riso workshop we were all told to research pictures of riso prints to get an understanding of the possibilities of risograph. After research, I we started designing our own posters to practice riso printing with. I ended up using a picture of a funny cat with glasses. I edited the picture in Photoshop and added my own background and eyes to it. I was extremely happy with the riso printed outcome! It was my first time using the riso printer and I had been a bit sceptical about it before, but I was positively surprised about how nicely my A3 poster turned out.
screenprinting workshop
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studio placard
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riso workshop
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exhibitions, talks, visits & the blog
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exhibitions There are three exhibitions in total this year. We had the first one before Christmas, the second one before Easter, and the last one will be in the summer after all work has been submitted. The Christmas exhibition was quite exciting for me because it was my first exhibition yet. I enjoyed setting up work with my classmates and I looked forward to hearing feedback on my Publishing Unbound outcomes from teachers and other students. I was also chosen to present my Pecha Kucha in front of everybody. The Pecha Kucha consisted of 20 slides and each slide was given only 20 seconds of time. I talked about the research, development and outcomes of Publishing Unbound. After the Pecha Kuchas we had time to take a look at the other studios’ work in their exhibitions. It was interesting to see what kind of projects the others had been working on. At the Easter exhibition, we had the opportunity to show our brandnew Anthology visual responses. This exhibition was not as polished as the Christmas exhibition. It was just an opportunity to again show to the other studios what we have been doing. There was also a Pecha Kucha session where this time a couple of students presented the whole studio’s work in front of a few guest judges from the industry. The summer show will be in the end of June. There we will display all projects done throughout the year. Studio Impression’s Summer Show Catalogue will work as a guide to any visitors from outside of the course.
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talks This year we have had so many talks from all possible branches of the design industry. We have had visitors, like Fig Taylor, Nik Hill, and Alyson Hurst from G.F Smith coming in to our classes to talk to us about their field. Fig Taylor gave us a long talk about how to create a good portfolio, Nik Hill about his career development and motion graphics, and Alyson Hurst game twice to talk to us about paper. In addition to that every other Friday we had a Hot House talk where each time a different industry professional talked about their work, career and gave us plenty of important advice. The topics of the talks covered illustration, banding, typography, and creative productions. They included visitors like Grand Visual, Family (and Friends), Sofia Clausse, Nina Chakrabarti and many others. On top of all this, in November we had a “Making a Living” week where we had talks about employability, freelancing, crowdfunding and Kickstarter. One guest speaker was Chris Walker, an illustrator and partner in Squirm and Learn who have so far published two books funded with crowdfunding/ Kickstarter. Another talk was from Will Hudson, the founder of It’s Nice That. He talked about applying for jobs and how to be successful. After him Jon Cockley, co-founder of Handsome Frank illustration agency, talked about portfolios, self-banding, and pricing of your work. The last talk was from Alec Dudson, the editor-in-chief of Intern, who talked about internships and work opportunities.
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visits Throughout the year, we had many interesting trips to publishing and printing related companies. While working on the Publishing Unbound project, we visited Hato Press, MagCulture, Fedrigoni Ltd. At Hato Press we learned about the process of riso printing, how the printer works and what the outcomes look like. MagCulture was an interesting magazine shop where we saw many interesting cover designs and magazine layouts. It was an inspiring visit and useful thinking about the zine designs we were all working on at the time. At Fedrigoni we heard about paper and saw samples and some of the latest publications. When we were working on the Anthology re-design project, we did a trip to Calverts Press and Four Corners Books. The couple of hours that we spent at Calverts was extremely informative. We got so many tips for the final published book. They advised us on paper stock, size, colors, printing methods etc. They also gave us a tour around their printing room where we got to learn about digital, lithograph, offset, and risograph printing. They explained to us very well how the different printing methods work, why they work like that, and why the outcomes with each type of printing come out the way they do. At Four Corners Book we got to present our Anthology design ideas to two professionals and hear what they thought about them. Their feedback was very useful for us and we tried to make our designs better based on it.
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the blog
An important part of the graphic design studies is updating a blog. Every student has had create a WordPress blog where we are supposed to reflect on workshops, talks, visits, projects, research, development, and outcomes. Every project brief mentions what the minimum number of reflective blog posts it that we must write about the project. The reason behind it is that the skills learned from blogging will be useful in our working lives. Every graphic designer needs to be able to talk about their work, reflect on it, document it, and present it in the right way. The purpose of having the WordPress blog is to get us into the habit of documenting our process and analysing it. When I was first told that I must create a blog, I was terrified. I had never blogged before and I wasn’t quite sure what they expect from our blogs. But after the first dread I started actually enjoying it. It is quite fun to compose posts and take photographs for the blog while you are working. It took a while to get used to the website and learn how everything works, but in the end, it is pretty easy. I even have a WordPress phone app now on my phone so I can write blog posts where ever I am! Usually if I write posts on the app, I only do the writing and then edit it and add pictures later on a computer.
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what’s CCS? Critical and Contextual Studies, or CCS, is a module which focuses on developing analytical and critical thinking skills, as well as, the ability to select an appropriate topic and carry out a thorough research-analysis process on it. The creative and critical thinking skills and essay writing skills learned in CCS prepare us for the dissertation process that we will face next year. Through the creative and written assignments that we have worked on this year, I have gained a lot of knowledge about multiple things, including cities and how they work, the development of societies and the effects that change and development have in the modern world.
The Alternative Souvenir of London was a design and writing assignment which you can find in this book on the next page. The idea behind it was to think about the complex and global urban contexts in which all designed material is made and used. London as a city is very versatile but still the souvenir selection available lacks variation. The same cheap little souvenirs are sold everywhere. The task was to combine the theoretical concepts studied about cities with your personal impression/memory/experience of London. The outcome of this was a designed and produced souvenir and a written analytical essay about it.
We had three different assignments in CCS this year:
The next two assignments were grouped together. The idea was to think about the changes that technological and ideological innovations create and have created in the world. We had to choose an event, object, or an idea that has changed the world and write a case study about it. After the case study, we had to research further an aspect related to the change or its cause and write a long essay about it. I did my case study about the invention of electric light and how it has shaped the modern cities. My essay again was about excessive artificial light and the negative effects it has on us and the nature.
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The Alternative Souvenir of London
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Critical Transformation Case Study
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Critical Transformation Essay
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alternative souvenir of london
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going against the conventional London. Full of tourists. Full of attractions, world-famous sights and landmarks. It is no wonder that a whole industry of souvenir production and trade has risen to make money out of that. Everyone wants to take a small memento with them to remember their trip by or to show to people back home. And we all know what those souvenirs are like because every single shop in London sells the same kind of items: Big Ben, London Eye, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, the Queen, London tube map; printed on t-shirts, postcards, done in miniature size, moulded into magnets, you name it. In fact, those are the forms of souvenirs you see wherever you travel, only the topics change according to the country/ city. But what if you could find a souvenir more interesting, more meaningful, one that reflects something often not seen about the city: an alternative souvenir of London.
CONVENTIONAL SOUVENIRS Before discussing what an alternative souvenir could be I think it is essential to discuss the conventions that the common souvenirs use and are built upon. Like said in Life’s Little Instruction Book you must first know the rules well, so you can break them effectively (*1). Mostly those rules have to do with reduction of size, nostalgia, and representation of an experience or place. If you go to any of the countless souvenir shops, for example on Oxford Street, the scale in which the objects are made is immediately apparent. They are all small and light, made to nicely fit into the purchaser’s bag in order to be easily carried around during the day or to be easily packed into suitcases without taking a lot of space. In other words, “the souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three-dimensional into the miniature” (*2). Most often these kind of souvenirs are small keychains, sculptures or other objects in the shape of a double decker, Tower of London or any of the other recognizable features of London. This representation of an attraction in a miniature size is tied to another important aspect of conventional souvenirs: the value. The conventional souvenirs usually are not very useful. As objects of their own they hold very little material value or use value, if they have
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it at all. They are small sculptures of famous attractions or other odds and ends that you bring home from a trip to gather dust on a shelf. They are objects that you buy just to remind you of a place or experience. As Susan Stewart puts it, “the souvenir (...) is not an object rising out of need or use value; it is an object arising out of the necessarily insatiable demands of nostalgia” (*3). So, the souvenirs themselves conventionally don’t hold the value, the memories that they are tied do. Actually, the concept of memories or experiences bringing the value to the object is probably the most core aspect of souvenirs. If you haven’t had the specific experience that the object is supposed to represent, it is completely worthless to you. For example, you would not buy a London Eye refrigerator magnet if you have not seen London Eye in real life. And if you did buy it regardless, it would not be a souvenir to you, it would be just a normal magnet. It would not hold the value that the original experience would have, only the value of a 15-gram piece of plastic. Also all these conventions, (being small, light, predictable, of little value) together allow one more important thing: mass production. Like mentioned in the beginning of this essay, all souvenir shops in London sell the same things, same themes, for the same price. Whichever conventional souvenir you may think of, they are all mass produced and found in a hundred other shops.
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THE ALTERNATIVE SOUVENIR Now that we have determined what the traditional souvenirs usually are like it is easy to move on to talk about what my alternative souvenir is about. The souvenir that I have created is a brick on which I have attached and painted different cultural symbols and labels representing Brick Lane’s history, the present and my personal experience. To me Brick Lane and the surrounding area is one of the most unique places in London. It is a place that I have visited dozens of times in the two years that I have now lived in London and a place that I associate with certain characteristics. Multiculturalism and street art are high on that list. However, I did not want to use street art as my main theme because since the beginning of this project I found the idea of palimpsest much more intriguing. According to the definition of New Oxford Dictionary of English, palimpsest is “something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form” (*4), and this could not be more fitting description of Brick Lane. If you look at the history of the area, you will find how it has had many different functions along its time of existence. It has been a home for silk and brick productions, different religions, and different cultures. The street has existed in the same place since the 15th century, starting as a small trail and developing into the street we know it today. Another example of similar setting is Berlin that “as a palimpsest implies voids, illegibilities, and erasures, but also offers a richness of traces and memories, restorations and new constructions that will mark the city as a lived
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space” (*5).The same way there are still old buildings in Brick Lane that have been used for all kind of purposes along the way, like the Jamme Masjid first as a synagogue then as mosque. And all these eras have left their own mark of “lived space” on Brick Lane that are still visible today. The souvenir that I have created echoes those same qualities and themes at the same time adding my personal experience of the place as the final layer of the collage. The reason why I made the souvenir using collaging has two parts. Firstly, I think palimpsest is a kind of collage of all the marks made and piled up over time. And secondly, if you look at all the street art everywhere in Brick Lane, the walls are collages of graffiti, posters, stickers and scribbles. I also decided to paint everything by hand (except for the Bengali and Hebrew) it represent better the authenticity of Brick Lane than just printing pictures and gluing them on. That same reason applies to my choice of using a real brick that I collected from behind the house where I live. However, it was white, so I painted it to look like an iconic terracotta brick. Also the heaviness and hardness of the real brick gives off the feel of permanence which is a part of palimpsest. The layer that represents my personal experience consists of graffiti and a chocolate wrapper from a curry restaurant. When I think about Brick Lane I think of how it looks which to me is all the street art covering walls, doors and trash cans. But I also think of the feeling and memories that the place raises in me. I have been there countless of times with my boyfriend and
friends eating and spending time and those are warm and happy memories. So to convey all this, I created graffiti using the words “street art”, “warm” and “bubbly”. I also attached a mint chocolate wrapper to the souvenir form the restaurant where we always eat. All these techniques and features are also what make my souvenir an alternative to the conventional souvenirs discussed in the beginning. Already the subject alone is very different from conventional souvenirs. Representing Brick Lane as a palimpsest and my personal thoughts about it is not a direct representation of any famous landmark or a touristic experience like traditional souvenirs are. Also they are usually about currently existing places or things, whilst my souvenir is also about the past and abstract concepts. The methods (hand-painting and a real heavy brick) used in realizing those concepts also go against the disposableness and mass production of traditional souvenirs. This alternative is a heavy-duty unique item unlike the plastic keychains and mugs sold in the normal souvenir shops.
As common as conventional souvenirs are they do not offer a lot of variety as discussed in this essay. However, after first thoroughly determining how those souvenirs work I have showed, how based on that knowledge, it is possible to create a more unique souvenir that has more depth to it. An alternative souvenir of London that goes against those conventions and showcases important concepts about a small vibrant Brick Lane.
If my souvenir was actually for sale, I would still like it to be hand-painted to preserve the exclusiveness. That would mean the target group for it would probably be people who value art and handcraft and be motivated to carry something a bit heavier, but also more meaningful, home with them on the basis of artistic and symbolic value. It would be sold in the art galleries around the Shoreditch-Whitechapel area because of the connection to a specific location.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Secondary sources: Brown, H. Jackson, Jr., Life’s Little Instruction Book: 511 suggestions, observations, and reminders on how to live a happy and rewarding life (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1991) Huyssen, Andreas, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and The Politics of Memory (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003) Stewart, Susan, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993)
FOOTNOTES (*1) Brown, H. Jackson, Jr., Life’s Little Instruction Book: 511 suggestions, observations, and reminders on how to live a happy and rewarding life (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1991)
Tertiary sources: Pearsall, Judy (Ed.), The New Oxford Dictionary of English (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1998) Websites:
(*2) Stewart, Susan, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993) p. 137 (*3) On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, p. 135 (*4) Pearsall, Judy (Ed.), The New Oxford Dictionary of English (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1998) (*5) Huyssen, Andreas, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and The Politics of Memory (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 84
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Nancollas, Tom, ‘The Brick Lane Mosque and Minority Religions in London’, http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/ modern/1780690/ (accessed 12 November 2016)
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